


On Sickness

by gnimaerd



Category: Dracula (TV 2013)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-10
Updated: 2013-11-10
Packaged: 2018-01-01 02:49:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 828
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1039460
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gnimaerd/pseuds/gnimaerd
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A vague AU or future!ficlet - Mina soothes Lucy early one morning.</p>
            </blockquote>





	On Sickness

“Is it a sickness, do you think?” Lucy’s voice is troubled – quiet in that way she reserves for the small hours of the morning. It sounds a note of vulnerability that Mina is unused to from her.

“Mm?” She glances down at where she had previously supposed Lucy to be dosing against her breast. The night has been a long one and it is grey dawn outside already and they have spent themselves to exhaustion on each other.

“The way I feel for you,” Lucy persists, stroking the skin over Mina’s ribs the way a child might finger a comfort blanket. “Have you – read anything like it? In your medical books? Is it like hysteria? Or – sodomy?”

There is something truly like fear in those words, Mina realises. It’s in the way Lucy half whispers them, as if in so doing she might prevent them from being there at all.

Mina puts aside the notes she had been making a vague pretence of studying in preparation for a class which is now a scant few hours away, and sinks down in the bed to bring Lucy’s face level with her own. She reaches, tentatively, to trace the shell of Lucy’s ear.

“If it is an illness, would you wish for a cure?”

Lucy does not consider this question long before shaking her head. Her gaze is fixed on Mina’s face, full of earnest intensity, and for a moment Mina finds herself brimming with tenderness. Because there is nothing wrong with Lucy, who is silly and sweet and fierce and kind and deeply in love with her, and the world would far rather insist that she is deviant – ‘inverted’, Mina’s sure she’s read that term somewhere – than simply let her remain silly and sweet and fierce and kind.

So she cups Lucy’s face in her hands and kisses her, very softly, and feels Lucy slacken like she always does when Mina kisses her (it’s endearing, actually, now that Mina’s used to it, because it makes Mina feel like a knight with Lucy her damsel; she enjoys the sensation of being so in charge).

“Then it doesn’t matter what the medical establishment may or may not consider you,” Mina whispers, against Lucy’s mouth, “or me, or us. Does it?”

Lucy shakes her head again, curling her fingers about Mina’s wrist, bringing it to her cheek. It feels hot beneath Mina’s palm – and damp, because Lucy is weeping, soundlessly, and Mina gathers her close and kisses her and rocks her and whispers tender things for a long, long time after that.

By the time Mina must get up to attend Professor Van Helsing’s morning lecture, Lucy is sleeping fitfully, her eyes swollen beneath their lids. Mina disentangles herself to only a minor, drowsy protest, and dresses, before kneeling on the edge of the bed to kiss Lucy’s temple. She is truly asleep again, Mina knows, because she is dribbling into the pillow and Lucy would never feign anything so vulgar if actually conscious.

She buries her face in Lucy’s thatch of blond curls for a moment, inhaling the faint scent of sweat and perfume, before Lucy stirs at her touch and glances up at her from under heavy eyelids.

“Must you go?”

“You know the answer to that,” Mina straightens, “I am to become an independent woman with the means to support a wife.”

Lucy smiles into the pillows, wiping her mouth as she tries to rouse herself. “Lie with me a little longer?”

“I shall be late,” Mina replies, although she is tempted into sitting on the edge of the bed and stroking Lucy’s outstretched arm, because Lucy is pouting at her and Lucy is never more tempting than when pouty and coy. And the bodice of Lucy’s night gown has been dragged down and Mina can see what look like bruises – gracious she hadn’t realised quite how fervent she’d been. She’d quite like to touch those, before they fade, see how the prints of her teeth feel on Lucy’s flesh.

But if she starts touching Lucy now she won’t be able to make herself stop, for all Lucy would practically roll over and purr for the attention, precious damsel that she is.

The vulnerability of their last conversation has been absorbed by the daylight, though, and Lucy is back to that flouncing, flamboyant state of mind in which she spends the majority of her days, stubborn and spoiled and demanding and alluring but strong. Only the faint, red rims of her eyes hint at the fragility of it all.

She will not need Mina again for the rest of the day, and Mina must not, must absolutely not, be late (not again). She kisses Lucy, decisively, then stands up.

“Good morning, my dear,” she says, “don’t sleep too long, mm? Get up and do something with the day.”

Lucy makes a disgusted sound in the back of her throat. “You’re such a prig.”

Mina smiles and takes her leave.


End file.
